AIBU to ask what parents on similar incomes give their children at university?

[MagnoliaPetals80]

I am looking for some advice from those who are helping their child financially at university. My DD is about to finish her A'Levels but had planned a gap year to work and save some money for uni. This week she has announced that she wants to go this year and the uni has approved this. She is determined to go whatever we say.

DH and I believed that we would have a year to save some money for her and that she would also have saved some money of her own and we are now trying to understand how it's going to work. She has picked an expensive city in the South East and is bad with money.

Our joint income is £65k or so and it looks to me like that means that she will qualify for the minimum loan amount. But we don't have lots of spare money. I know there are many variables but I'm interested in how much support you give your child (if you are able to support them at all financially). We think we could stretch to £200 a month but it looks like the loan might not even fully cover her rent. What's the norm these days if you are in a comparable situation? As I say, I know there are variables, I'm only asking if you are on a similar income.

Thank you in advance :-)

Surely the DD has to look at whether she can actually afford to fmgo to a chosen uni if the living costs are too high. Cut your cloth and all that. My DS didn't go to Brighton due to expensive accomodation costs

My child has just finished their first year, they got the minimum loan. It all went on rent, I covered the shortfall between the loan and rent which was only £400. In addition to this I give them £50 a week towards living expenses (food, toiletries, socialising). only the weeks they were actually at Uni not on their (long) holidays,

I also bought everything they needed to move away - that adds up! I also bought them toiletries and the odd food shop throughout the year and sent money for the odd takeaway when I wanted to treat them.

They had a couple of thousand in savings when they went but hasn’t really dented it that much as they have a part time job in the holidays and take all the hours offered. Plus they and their flatmates have been very big on pre drinking before going out to save the expense of buying drinks out ha ha.

We got lucky that their allocated accommodation was very cheap compared to the one they applied for, so that has helped otherwise it would have been £3000 I would have been topping the rent up by. Going into a house share for next year and although you have to take it for a 12 month period, it is relatively cheap compared to some universities cities but I will still need to top it up by £900

2 of their flat mates and quite a few other students they know have had their basic loans to live on as their parents pay their rent in full.

Mine are not at uni yet but I have friends who have kids there.
Bar one, their kids all chose universities near home so they can live at home. They didn't all want to but they had to be realistic about what was affordable.
Can you daughter do her chosen course in a uni near home?

Well I can only dream of earning that amount. I am in a professional job earning way less than that, paying for a house and all related bills so yes I do think it is quite a lot !

Dd3 will go next year after her gap year.
She will only get minimal loan, so we are bracing ourselves to pay her rent and she will have to live on the loan. She will be doing primary teaching qts so I don't think she will be able to work term time but will likely do PGL or similar during hols. The huge upside is that she is likely to get a job at the end of it.

Well yes but one of mine is at Lancaster. It’s a fairly cheap place to live. Accommodation is still much more than the minimum loan c £6500. So that needs topping up too.

This shouldn’t be news however. Parents have had to top up since the 90s

@Mahalepirose
full time university courses they’re only required to be in about 8-10 hrs a week max on the majority of courses.
In Nottingham, Leicester, Derby and Lincoln the 4 nearest university places to us - there is a huuuuge surplus of empty un-occupied university accommodation with Lincoln even closing their own onsite rooms on campus and not enough uptake, definately related to the COLC. The market is saturated with accommodation as there is more “home students”.
I think that more and more young people are studying at a local university and living at
home for financial reasons, as people just don’t have that sort of spare money all the time to physically pay the rent and living costs etc…. plus if they’re only required so few hours to attend and so there is no point in getting into debt over if you can travel daily or even stop over 1 night. It’s different if you want to do a course that isn’t offered locally but even then travelling on the train or 1-2 nights a week b&b is substantially cheaper. I’ll be telling mine to look at something local there’s no way we can afford to pay thousands out for student accommodation.

People will bang on about “the experience” but who wants to start out in life up to their eyeballs in debt?

My DS is at uni in an expensive and touristy northern city. His accommodation in a shared house is £200 a week excluding bills. He gets a student loan and has a supermarket job. During the holidays he works full time at the supermarket - the supermarket has him on a student contract so he works at the home store during the holidays and at the university store during term time. We give him £50 a week for groceries plus we pay for his car along with insurance (he needs this to get to his job) etc and his phone. He just about manages with that. I have no idea what we’d have done if he hadn’t got the supermarket job as the loan doesn’t cover his costs at all.

Whereas Bradford for example comes from about £95 a week in halls which I believe are over 38 weeks so well under minimum loan

You are 25 odd years into a professional job and "can only dream of" earning £32 500 ?
Someone on minimum wage earns over £26K.

The number don't add up here.

We are planning to pay dc rent and she can use loans for the rest. She’s working at the weekend with a company that runs kids activities and may be able to continue that, although she’s taking a year out and hoping to get a better paid, more hours job. She may be able to live at home in year 2/3, it’s about a 45 minute commute. We have been saving for years and have enough set aside for her. I did start looking into it a long time ago, knowing she was very likely to want to go to uni. I do appreciate we are lucky to be able to.

My DD’s near max loan just about covers her rent. I don’t give her anything extra (I pay for her phone). She works during the summer and that pays for her food and other expenses plus she gets a grant from her uni. Most parents seem to give circa £50/ week after accommodation is covered. The range is £25-100/week. My DD spends way less than that - maybe £100 a month max. Sit down with her work out a budget being up front about how much you can afford to contribute.

It’s only £6K a year net above minimum wage. It’s not a really good wage at all. Median wage is £39k

I have been there with kids changing minds about gap years late in the game - when your peers are getting excited about going away and starting the next phase of their lives it’s hard not to get swept up in the excitement.

I’d have a conversation about what Uni looks like with and without a gap year - how she would be unlikely to be able to afford to go out as much, join clubs etc and make the most of her time there, vs having that cushion. I’d then steer her to the gap year opportunities there are, which means that she can organise for some interesting and fun experiences as well as saving a pot of money. Worth also selling how in the current job market it’s important to find a way to differentiate yourself, and gap year experience is a way to do that.

I fully appreciate however that her parents are the last people she is likely to listen to! Does she have any slightly older friends she could talk this through with?

Out of all my friends & colleagues children that started Uni in the last few years, none of their loans covered their rent in full. Admittedly they all only received minimum loan, but I would work on the basis that there will be a shortfall of approx £2-3k between the rent and the loan.

We have a joint income of around 68k so not much more then you. Until now we have had two at Uni so i think they got higher loans. However from nxt month we will only have dd at Uni so we are expected to contribute more for her and she has been told she will get the very minimum.
It has been a hard slog over the past ten years with three kids going to Uni. It makes it virtually impossible for us to save for retirement. Dh hastwo chronic health conditions and neds to retire as soon as DD finishes Uni.
We have been giving the two kids around £320 per month each. The loans only just cover rent. DS has found it difficult to get any work in the big summer holidays and has only mnaged to get a few weeks of christmas seasonal work the past two years. DD is doing quite an intensive course where she does not get the big summer holidays off due to placements etc but is hoping to get some work this year. She has tried for bar work/ supermarket work etc but there seems to be little. Having to help with two lots of rent deposits/ travel etc is hard. We will feel truly rich this time next year ! Now that dd'sloan has reduced a lot this year we may have to give her more. She fortunately does get the NHS bursary which helps with travel to placements etc but often they are miles away. She is home for a few days next week and we really need to go through things bugetwise thoroughtly for her final year.

Mine all get minimum maintenance loan to live off and we pay their rent. They work in the holidays to top up the min maintenance. Kind of works for us.

Yes, dreaming earning a household income of 65,000 is what I said. Yes, it is way more than I currently earn in a professional job - they don't all pay big bucks unfortunately.

One of my sons is in Manchester works as a chef 30 hrs a week alongside his psychology degree, other son at Manchester does economics and has less free time, he’s doing some kind of telesales thing which pays really well, third son in Sheffield has very low contact time but doesn’t work in term time due to autism but his rent is £100 a week less than Manchester, we top up to max student loan and they work for everything else.

Although if they are having their rent paid and then living off minimum loan (£4915) they are actually very well off. Most universities have 30 weeks of term time so they have £164 a week which is a lot higher than most students have. Mine are able to live very nicely on £3900 a year (£130 a week/£1300 a term).

In England on that income she’ll get min loan around £5000 and you’ll be expected to top her up to max loan, this is approx £6000 a year expected top up.
It’s unlikely that min loan will cover rent unless they go somewhere very cheap like Preston or Queens Belfast which discounts halls for GB by £2500.
Yr 1 we paid halls, she chose cheapest £6700 and lived on min loan. Yr 2 we have paid private rent £8400 as it’s a 12 m contract.
Unless she has a job she can definitely transfer I wouldn’t bet on her easily securing a job in university city around her studies the pt job market is so competitive and lots want yr round employees or total flexibility.
If she has a job lined up for after A level exams she potentially can work and get a bit of cushion this summer.
Yr2 deposit often catches people out.
If you can’t pay your expected contribution you need to tell her asap.

I have to ask what professional job is this? Are you FT? Is that your take home pay or your salary?

My ds is at Lancaster and has struggled to find any work whilst at Uni. The most he has had is a few weeks seasonal chrsitmas work the past two years. Small northern town and huge numbers of students !

Hi everyone

I'm going to bow out of this thread now. I have had some great advice and have got lots to think about. Thank you all for your support and information.

For the few that said I have deflected my responsibilities / have not been organised / have had 18 years to think of university, I have already explained that we had some bad luck a few years ago that swallowed everything we had saved for uni. Plus I said I feel I have failed her. I am also not being harsh with DD having spent her savings - I get it, I have also been young. I AM annoyed because of the financial stress but 'harsh' would be refusing to help her - we are going to help her. That's why I posted on here to get a sense of what the norm is.

Thanks again everyone
M.R.

full sleeve swim suits / long sleeve clothes, and a hat.

you can’t rely on others, especially if they are not on the same page about sun exposure. they just never will be aware enough.

how are the cousins?